The Pentagon made Trump's military parade more about history, less about weapons


The Pentagon on Friday revealed plans for the Veterans Day military parade President Trump has requested. The proposal includes planes and veterans in "period uniforms" representing past conflicts, but they will march alongside "wheeled vehicles only, no tanks" to "minimize damage to local infrastructure."
Trump's initial vision for the event included more hardware and weaponry and less emphasis on history "from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 to today," as the Pentagon's memo describes. The president was inspired by a Bastille Day parade in Paris last summer, and he told the Defense Department to "top" the French display.
Read The Week's Gracy Olmstead, a military wife, on why so many military families oppose the parade idea.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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